Joining Online Communities

When I first saw this assignment I was excited for a few reasons. One was that I thought it was a good opportunity to begin expanded my networks. The other (and this was mistakenly assumed) is that I thought it would be a quick process to find four interesting networks and make my posts. I can safely say, especially as I am writing this a few hours before the deadline, that I was mistaken in the amount of time it would take me to sift through many different online communities. Along the way I discovered several things:

• Many online groups require your joining to be approved by an administrator. Not an issue  when they are on top of things. It is a much bigger deal though when they are not. This was the case with LinkedIn. I “joined” three groups on Friday evening and am still waiting on getting approved. Others like Edmodo require your membership to be verified. Although now that I have this set up I think I have actually found a really active community of passionate social studies teachers. Something I had been looking to find from the outset.
• Many groups are not nearly as active as others. It doesn’t take much scrolling to realize that some posts near the top of the group go back months or years.
• Other online communities were quick to turn negative at times. Teaching certainly has its challenges, but I want my networking to help me find an outlet for finding and sharing solutions to challenges rather than complaining about them.

In my searching I focused on the following networks and communities:

• Google+
  • Central Minnesota Google Educator Group
  • Teaching World History
• Reddit
  • Subreddit for History Teachers
• Scoopit
  • History Matters
• Edmodo
  • Social Studies Subject Community

A summary of my responses can be seen at this link: Summary of Contributions

One of the things that I need to consider when looking at what communities and platforms to stay with is the overall quality of responses present in each. I also know that I need to keep track of quality things to contribute. Given the time frame I had this became difficult. I will likely keep track of ideas though on scoop.it and use that as a means for sharing on a more scheduled basis going forward. Finally if I had to rank the value of what I found in different networks I found these would be my rankings and justification:

1. Edmodo Social Studies Community – Active community posting about my current teaching area. Once I was verified, participation was very easy.
2. Google+ Google Educator Group – This group was not nearly as active as the edmodo one, but it is made up of educators in my region with a shared interest in Google Education apps which I use regularly. The problem I have found with this group though is that while there are a ton of members, very few actively participate.
3. Google+ Teaching World History – This was another group that seemed to have a few people dominating the discussion. While there were some interesting posts by some members I didn’t see anything in this group that the Edmodo group didn’t already cover.
4. Reddit – Subreddit for History Teachers – Outside of Edmodo this was the most active of the communities that I found. Problem was, the topics mentioned were not always the highest of quality. Lots of negative posts were present in some threads that were not always helpful. There were some good posts and ideas though and the platform is very easy to participate in and get the feedback of others. A final thing to consider with Reddit though is the relative anonymity of the network which also can devalue it to a degree.

This assignment has given me some things to think about. I am happy to find some of what I did but am also looking forward to seeing what others have found as well to be better networked.